Frequently asked questions

1The world of MADpunk and the logic of MAD

1. What is MADpunk?

MADpunk is a tabletop roleplaying game set in another reality within the multiverse: a recognizable Earth whose history has led to an alternative, retrofuturistic Cold War. You can experience stories of espionage, intrigue, adventure, or survival through very different characters. In this world, every action has consequences, and personal conflicts can end up affecting the balance between the major powers.

2. What does MAD mean, and why is it so important?

MAD stands for Mutually Assured Destruction. The major powers can destroy one another, but doing so would also bring about their own end. That balance explains the importance of espionage, propaganda, covert operations, and proxy wars. Characters act within the same logic: gaining an advantage has consequences, and using all the power available can prove disastrous.

3. What does it mean that every action has consequences?

What you do prompts responses. Rescuing someone might expose a network of collaborators; eliminating an adversary might trigger retaliation; revealing a secret might change an alliance. The consequences can affect your character, the people around them, or the global balance. Even completing the mission can make the situation worse. That is why the objective matters as much as how you achieve it and what happens afterward.

4. How is MADpunk different from other roleplaying games?

MADpunk puts the relationship between your success and its consequences for others at the center of the experience. Winning a confrontation or completing a mission can bring the world closer to mutual destruction, a threat expressed through the Doomsday Clock. This logic gives particular weight to espionage and restraint, and connects the freedom of an open world with long campaigns or crises played against the clock.

5. Is this a world of superheroes and extraordinary powers?

Most inhabitants are people without powers, with recognizable jobs, relationships, and concerns. Superhumans, psychotronics users, and massive war machines exist, but they are exceptional, and their influence far exceeds their numbers. You can play a campaign focused entirely on espionage and intrigue among ordinary people, or give those extraordinary elements a more prominent role if you prefer.

6. What role does the Doomsday Clock play?

The Clock shows how close the world is to all-out nuclear war. It connects events during missions to the global balance: characters' actions and events around the world can move it closer to Midnight or farther away. That threat can remain in the background of a campaign or become an immediate crisis on which everyone's survival depends.

2The stories you can play

7. Where does the race against the clock come from?

It grows out of the Doomsday Clock and the escalation of conflict. A crisis can accelerate its advance and force characters to act before Midnight is reached. Their decisions can make the situation worse or help stop it. The urgency comes from what is happening in the world and its consequences: the crisis must be resolved before it becomes irreversible.

8. How long can a game last?

MADpunk supports campaigns that unfold over months and many sessions, as well as games played against the clock that can be completed in an hour. A campaign gives you time to explore relationships, objectives, and accumulating consequences. In a short game, the pressure of the Doomsday Clock focuses the experience on a decisive crisis. A long campaign can also include moments when you must race against the clock.

9. Is every story about saving the world?

You can investigate a disappearance, protect someone, steal information, or carry out a mercenary contract. The nuclear threat is part of the world even when characters are dealing with problems closer to home. Some missions will have local consequences; others will touch on interests capable of triggering escalation. The group can discover that dimension as the story unfolds, without necessarily starting as a team tasked with preventing the apocalypse.

10. What kinds of campaigns can I play?

Espionage and infiltration, investigation and conspiracies, mercenary operations, heroic adventures, conflicts involving psychotronics, or survival. A campaign can focus on one of these experiences or combine them. A spy story can revolve around secrets, relationships, and divided loyalties; another might explore what it means to possess extraordinary power. Both share the same world and the importance of consequences.

11. What does it mean that MADpunk is an open world?

There is an established world you can explore and expand through your own stories. Within the campaign your group has agreed to play, you can pursue objectives, choose allies, and seek different solutions. That freedom prompts responses from the world: organizations have their own interests, and other characters react. The Intelligence Officer, who runs the game, develops those consequences and moves the world forward with you and your group.

12. Do I have to choose a fixed character class?

Character creation lets you combine an identity, a profession, abilities, and loyalties to bring your own idea to life. You can play a journalist with military experience, a diplomat working as an informant, or a psychotronics user involved in espionage. The game's options have their limits, but they allow you to blend backgrounds and develop characters who are not confined to a single function within the group.

13. Are all characters secret agents?

Agent is the name given to any player character in MADpunk. Your character might be a spy, but could also be a doctor, a smuggler, a mercenary, or someone drawn into a conflict far bigger than they are. Their profession and motivations help define the story: they might serve an organization, defend a cause, protect their family, or act out of self-interest.

3Your group and getting started

14. Can I choose my side and my motivations?

You can serve a major power, belong to an independent organization, or find your own path. Your affiliation influences your opportunities, commitments, and loyalties. You can also play someone trying to do the right thing, a professional carrying out an assignment, or an opportunist. The world accommodates those perspectives and responds to what you do, regardless of how you justify your decisions.

15. Does the group have to cooperate, or can characters have conflicting interests?

Your group can play as a united team or as characters with different agendas, secrets, and divided loyalties. Espionage offers plenty of room for uneasy cooperation and double agents. The logic of MAD adds a particular tension: rivals may need one another to prevent a catastrophe that would engulf them all. Your group agrees on how much cooperation or rivalry it wants to explore.

16. Is combat the main focus of the game?

That depends on the campaign. You can play stories that emphasize investigation, roleplaying, infiltration, or negotiation, and others with more action. In all of them, direct conflict has consequences. The logic of MAD means that weighing the risk of retaliation, showing restraint, or finding an indirect solution can be as decisive as prevailing through force.

17. Can I play if I have never played a roleplaying game before?

Yes. You play a character and decide what they attempt to do in the situations presented by the Intelligence Officer. The group builds the story through those decisions, and the Officer helps apply the rules. A first mission with a clear objective lets you get familiar with the game and discover which kinds of experiences interest you.

18. Do I need to know all of MADpunk's history?

You can start with the background of your character and their first mission. This is a world parallel to our own, with recognizable societies and conflicts, although its history and technological development are different. You can discover its distinctive features through play. The setting materials let you learn more about countries, organizations, and characters as they become relevant to your campaign.

19. What do I need to start playing?

A group, someone to take on the role of Intelligence Officer, and a first mission. The materials for play include manuals, character sheets, dice, and a deck of playing cards. The Agent's Guide helps players get started; the Field Manual contains the complete reference for the person running the game. You can begin with a short adventure or plan an ongoing campaign from the outset.

20. Can I create my own stories within MADpunk?

Yes. You can develop missions, characters, locations, and organizations for your campaign, using the MADpunk universe as a foundation. Its open nature gives your group room for creativity and stories that reflect its interests. If you want to share or publish your creations, consult the community license for the applicable terms.

4MADpunk and other roleplaying games

21. What’s different about MADpunk if I’m coming from Dungeons & Dragons?

In a typical Dungeons & Dragons game, you join a party of adventurers who explore, talk, fight, and grow more powerful in a fantasy world. Classes, subclasses, backgrounds, and multiclassing options allow for very different characters, but their abilities and progression are organized around classes and levels. Cooperation between adventurers with complementary abilities is central to that experience.

In MADpunk, you can create a scientist, a soldier, a spy, a thief, a smuggler, a mercenary, or a hero. Your character can even belong to a terrorist organization or work as a double agent. These are starting points for imagining a person, not classes that determine their abilities. You combine skills, strengths, weaknesses, and loyalties: a scientist might have combat experience; a smuggler, medical knowledge; a diplomat, a second identity working for the enemy. Your character develops through the skills they use and the experiences they live through.

You can also decide what makes that character exceptional. They might stand out through training and gadgets, have permanent mutations, or use psychotronics, with abilities you might associate with magic in a fantasy game. These possibilities need to fit the character and the campaign. Most people in MADpunk are ordinary individuals, and a story can revolve entirely around them.

The change of setting affects what you do: you are on a recognizable parallel Earth within the MADpunk multiverse, shaped by an alternative Cold War. Recovering a prototype might involve investigation, forged documents, infiltration, negotiation, or a military operation. A gadget, a convincing cover identity, or a contact might solve what initially looked like a problem requiring force. The open world lets you choose your objectives and how to become involved in its conflicts.

At the table, D&D’s emphasis on the d20 gives way to a combination of dice rolls and challenges based on poker hands. Some situations involve managing cards and resources; in contests, you must also decide how much to risk without knowing your opponent’s hand. Your character’s expertise influences your options. This brings a different dynamic into the adventure itself.

The philosophy of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, changes what it means to win. Every action has consequences: you might complete a mission and trigger retaliation that harms everyone. The Doomsday Clock reflects that escalation: a perfectly executed action can bring the world closer to destruction. Your group might be a united team, a temporary alliance, or a gathering of agents with incompatible orders. Sometimes, keeping an enemy alive or making a deal with them is more useful than defeating them.

Like D&D, MADpunk supports standalone adventures and long campaigns. You can explore the consequences of your decisions over months of play or face a crisis in a one-hour session against the clock. In that format, the urgency comes from the Doomsday Clock: you must act before the situation becomes irreversible, even when achieving your own objective is not enough to prevent it.

22. What will I find in MADpunk if I play Call of Cthulhu?

A typical Call of Cthulhu game involves investigating a mystery, connecting clues, and confronting the horrors of the Mythos, putting your life and sanity at risk. Investigators can come from many different professions: scientists, journalists, soldiers, and criminals all fit its approach to character creation through occupations and skills. MADpunk shares that freedom to put ordinary people at the center of the story, while opening up other objectives and ways to intervene.

You might investigate a disappearance, lead a military operation, make a living through smuggling, work as a spy, take mercenary contracts, or act as a hero. The same conspiracy can be approached from different positions: uncovering it, infiltrating it, protecting someone involved, or helping those behind it. Investigation can drive an entire campaign or sit alongside action, political intrigue, rescue missions, and clandestine operations.

Your profession does not determine everything you can do. A scientist might be a double agent; a thief might have a permanent mutation; a soldier might use psychotronics. You can combine training, traits, and loyalties without choosing a class, or play a character without powers who relies on ingenuity, contacts, and equipment. Extraordinary abilities exist in MADpunk, but only a minority of its inhabitants possess them.

Call of Cthulhu already offers decisions about risk, such as pushing a failed roll, while Pulp Cthulhu expands the experience to include heroes, weird science, and psychic powers. In MADpunk, you can explore an open world: a parallel Earth in an alternative Cold War. You can prepare an infiltration with forged documents, tracking devices, and gadgets, or draw on mutations and psychotronics when the campaign includes those resources. Your choice of character and equipment changes how you approach the problem.

Resolving challenges also feels different. Where Call of Cthulhu uses a percentile system, MADpunk combines dice with skill tests and contests based on poker. In certain scenes, you manage a hand, decide whether to commit more resources, and deal with hidden information. Your character’s expertise shapes your options, so the cards connect their abilities with your decisions at the table.

The logic of MAD places consequences within the relationships between people, organizations, and powers capable of destroying one another. Discovering the truth may be only the beginning: publishing it, concealing it, or handing it to one side can make the crisis worse. A companion might help you investigate while secretly gathering that information for someone else. The threat can also come from your allies, your orders, or the success of your own operation.

Both games support short stories and extensive campaigns. In MADpunk, you can spend months unraveling a web of conspiracies or play a one-hour session against the clock, tied to the Doomsday Clock. It can move closer to Midnight even as your investigation advances and your plans succeed: finding the person responsible and preventing a catastrophe are not always the same objective.

23. What’s different about MADpunk if I already play Cyberpunk RED?

A typical Cyberpunk RED game might begin with a dangerous job and grow around money, reputation, contacts, and corporate interests. Night City is its main setting, but campaigns can also follow media crews, medical teams, and other groups. Its Roles can be combined and reinterpreted; a character’s background, skills, cyberware, and equipment allow for considerable customization.

MADpunk places you on a parallel Earth in a retrofuturistic Cold War, where major powers, intelligence agencies, corporations, and independent groups coexist. You can play a soldier, scientist, spy, smuggler, thief, mercenary, hero, or member of a terrorist organization. You might serve an institution, remain independent, or operate as a double agent. That position changes who supplies your resources, which objectives you pursue, and what consequences can follow from obeying an order.

Character creation combines skills, strengths, weaknesses, and affiliations without organizing your character around a predefined role. You could build a doctor who trades in information or a scientist who carries out clandestine operations. The source of your abilities can also vary: training and equipment, permanent mutations, or psychotronics. These extraordinary capabilities are part of the setting, although most inhabitants have no powers, and an espionage campaign can revolve entirely around ordinary people.

If you enjoy choosing and preparing equipment in Cyberpunk RED, MADpunk offers a different range of tools for devising solutions: forged documents, tracking beacons, disguised weapons, briefcase terminals, and vehicles with concealed devices. Their retrofuturistic character gives operations a distinctive feel. You might gain access through a cover identity, intercept information, negotiate with a contact, or prepare an extraction; gadgets can change the entire plan as well as make your character more effective.

Cyberpunk RED resolves skill checks with the d10 and also offers specialized gameplay, such as the digital incursions of netrunning. Alongside its dice rolls, MADpunk includes challenges and contests based on poker hands. Uncertainty takes a different form when you manage cards and resources or decide whether to continue without knowing your opponent’s hand. Your character’s expertise also affects how you handle that challenge.

The philosophy of MAD adds a particular tension to conflicting interests. Your success can destabilize those maintaining a precarious balance: delivering a prototype might secure your payment while also bringing the major powers closer to war. The Doomsday Clock makes that shared danger visible. A rival might need your help, while an ally might be pushing the world toward Midnight. Divided loyalties can become the heart of the campaign.

You can link operations over months of play, allowing your relationships, resources, and objectives to change, or focus the session on a crisis with an hour to resolve it. Both games support long and short stories; in MADpunk, the Clock connects time pressure to a global situation that your decisions can contain or worsen.

24. What does MADpunk offer if I enjoy Pathfinder?

Pathfinder, taking its second edition as the reference, stands out for the depth of its character customization. Ancestry, background, class, feats, and archetypes let you build very different characters and keep making choices as they advance. In a typical fantasy adventure, those choices come together with exploration, roleplaying, and encounters where coordinating abilities, positioning, and managing the three actions in your turn carry considerable weight.

MADpunk offers another kind of freedom: creating a person through their abilities, traits, and loyalties without fitting them into a class. You can be a scientist, soldier, spy, thief, smuggler, mercenary, or hero, and combine those backgrounds. A doctor might work for intelligence; a diplomat might run a smuggling network; a double agent might cooperate with the group while pursuing a different objective. The distinction lies in how you build the concept, rather than in competing over the number of possible combinations.

You can also choose different sources for your abilities. Your character might rely on skills, weapons, and gadgets, have permanent mutations, or use psychotronics, with possibilities you might associate with magic in fantasy. Their profession and the source of their abilities are not bundled into a single class. Everything needs to fit the character and the campaign, but you can move from a story about people without powers to one with extraordinary elements within the same world.

On a parallel Earth shaped by an alternative Cold War, an adventure might involve scientific investigation, a heist, a military operation, or negotiations between major powers. The open world lets you decide which conflicts to engage with and how to approach them. Preparing a false identity, obtaining a gadget, or discovering who can authorize an evacuation might prove decisive. These resources create opportunities for protagonists whose main contribution is technical, social, or clandestine.

Many of Pathfinder’s tactical decisions revolve around the d20, actions, and character abilities. MADpunk combines dice rolls with skill tests and contests based on poker. In those challenges, you also make decisions about your hand and the resources you commit, while hidden information can influence your next move. This adds another kind of decision at the table, alongside mission planning and combat.

The philosophy of MAD introduces a problem that can outlast a tactical victory: defeating the opponent in front of you might provoke a response that destroys what you wanted to protect. The Doomsday Clock links events to that danger. You can execute your plan well and make the global situation worse. Your group might need to broker a pact between rivals, restrain its own side, or give up an advantage to prevent escalation.

Pathfinder supports long campaigns and very short adventures, and so does MADpunk. You can play for months, developing your character and the consequences of their decisions, or tackle a one-hour session against the clock. What makes that format distinctive in MADpunk is its connection to the Clock: the time available and the threat of destruction are part of the problem you must solve.

25. What’s different about MADpunk if I’m coming from Daggerheart?

Daggerheart offers heroic fantasy and shared storytelling, with a particular focus on characters and their relationships. Its Hope and Fear dice influence both the outcome and how a scene unfolds; the spotlight moves between participants without a rigid initiative order. Character creation combines class, subclass, ancestry, community, and Experiences you define yourself. It already gives you freedom to express who you are, alongside cards that develop your abilities.

In MADpunk, you can build your character without a class organizing their abilities. You can be a scientist, soldier, thief, smuggler, spy, mercenary, or hero; you can also play a double agent or a member of a terrorist organization. Your profession, loyalties, and skills come together to create the character. A scientist might make a living selling secrets, while a soldier might conceal the fact that they work for another power.

The source of your abilities also allows for different approaches: training and gadgets, permanent mutations, or psychotronics, which enables effects you might associate with magic in fantasy. Powers are exceptional in a population made up mostly of ordinary people. You can play espionage stories without extraordinary abilities or include them in a military or heroic campaign. MADpunk provides a recognizable parallel Earth, open to exploration, with an alternative Cold War and conflicts that connect its protagonists.

Both games use dice and cards, but the cards serve different purposes. In Daggerheart, they represent aspects and abilities of your character. In MADpunk, poker helps resolve tests and contests: you manage a hand and resources, and in contests you do not know all your opponent’s cards. This introduces a different dynamic during play. Equipment provides further ways to act, from documents supporting a cover identity to a tracking device or a concealed weapon.

Daggerheart already includes successes with complications and countdowns. MADpunk’s contribution lies in what the danger means: MAD is Mutually Assured Destruction. A rival might be essential to maintaining the balance, and a victory might trigger retaliation. The Doomsday Clock represents escalation toward a shared catastrophe; a well-executed action can bring it closer because of what it achieves, even when the resolution goes your way.

That logic also creates opportunities to explore trust within the group. You might share the danger with someone whose orders conflict with yours, conceal your true affiliation, or need the cooperation of someone you are trying to deceive. Divided loyalties can sustain the story, depending on the campaign your group has agreed to play. Each character’s immediate objective and everyone’s survival can come into conflict.

Daggerheart places particular emphasis on campaigns and character development. MADpunk also lets you play for months, explore the world, and allow relationships to change. You can also concentrate the experience into a one-hour session against the clock, tied to the Doomsday Clock, where the crisis demands quick decisions about how much you are willing to risk to achieve your objective.

26. What does MADpunk offer if I enjoy Delta Green operations?

Delta Green combines investigation, clandestine operations, and horror: professionals with different specialties try to contain the unnatural and cover up what happened. Their skills, contacts, and resources help them tackle dangerous missions, while sanity and bonds with family and friends reveal the personal cost. An operation might end with the threat contained and the agent’s life in much worse shape. It is an experience that already places considerable weight on consequences.

MADpunk supports espionage campaigns built around secrets, cover identities, and preparation, as well as military operations, heroic adventures, scientific investigation, smuggling, and mercenary jobs. It takes place on an Earth parallel to our own, an open world shaped by an alternative Cold War. Most inhabitants are ordinary people; a story about intelligence work and double agents can function entirely without powers or supernatural threats.

Agent is the term for any player character in MADpunk. You can be a soldier, scientist, journalist, thief, smuggler, hero, or member of a terrorist organization. You combine skills, strengths, weaknesses, and loyalties without choosing a class. You might rely on training and gadgets, have permanent mutations, or use psychotronics. These possibilities broaden the kinds of protagonists you can play, within the campaign’s premise.

Preparation offers different ways to handle an operation: establishing a cover identity with forged documents, tracking someone with a beacon, using devices concealed in a vehicle, or gaining access through a contact. Psychotronics and mutations can add further options when they are part of the story. A technical specialist, a combatant, and a skilled negotiator can approach the same objective in very different ways.

At the table, MADpunk combines dice rolls with skill tests and contests based on poker hands. Some scenes add decisions about cards and resources to roleplaying and planning. In contests, hidden information makes you weigh whether to continue or withdraw. Your character’s expertise influences the options available during those challenges.

Loyalties can drive the entire game. You might work for an agency, serve two sides, or cooperate with someone whose orders are to achieve the opposite of yours. The philosophy of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, gives even enemies a reason to cooperate: taking the confrontation too far can destroy everyone. The Doomsday Clock connects your decisions to that balance. You can follow orders, win the operation, and bring the world closer to all-out war.

Like Delta Green, MADpunk supports standalone operations and ongoing campaigns. You can follow the same characters for months, developing their alliances, betrayals, and the consequences of their actions, or play a crisis with an hour to resolve it. In the latter format, the Clock turns escalation into an urgent problem: averting catastrophe might require questioning the mission, protecting an enemy, or discovering who within the group is making the situation worse.